Cops eyeing parody Twitter account in Brooklyn Bridge caper

It's the second Twitter handle in hot water this year for tweeting humor.

New York authorities have subpoenaed Twitter to unmask who's behind a parody account that tweeted responsibility for last month's Brooklyn Bridge caper.

The New York Police Department awoke July 22 with egg on its face when two giant American flags atop two locked 276-foot towers were stolen from one of the Big Apple's most heavily guarded landmarks and were replaced with bleached-out Old Glories.

Nobody claimed responsibility other than a Twitter account that was clearly marked "parody." The tweet from @BicycleLobby was picked up by several news agencies and treated as a confession before they backtracked.

"Earlier today we hoisted two white flags to signal our complete surrender of the Brooklyn Bridge bicycle path to pedestrians," the tweet read. (The Twitter handle jokes about the powerful bike lobby, which in reality doesn't exist.)

It's not the first time the operator of a parody Twitter account has gotten into hot water for their tweets. Illinois authorities raided a Peoria man's house in April to unmask who was behind an account parodying Peoria's mayor in alleged violation of a state law making it a crime to impersonate a public official. A civil rights lawsuit is pending.

New York District Attorney's Office, meanwhile, hasn't made any arrests a month after the caper. And it's obviously not laughing about the @BicycleLobby tweet. Prosecutors subpoenaed Twitter to learn everything they could about who's behind the account, including the IP logs connected to the nefarious tweet in question.

The parody account tweeted a link to the subpoena Friday and also tweeted that @BicycleLobby "did not fake the Moon landing or go for a ride with Beyoncé."

Steve Vaccaro, the attorney for the account's author, said his anonymous client wasn't behind the Brooklyn Bridge debacle.

"He’s claimed credit for the moon landing, for the faking of President Obama’s birth certificate, for the crash of the New York Times website,” Vaccaro told the New York Times. "It should be transparently clear to anyone that this was a joke."

David Kravets
The senior editor for Ars Technica. Founder of TYDN fake news site. Technologist. Political scientist. Humorist. Dad of two boys. Been doing journalism for so long I remember manual typewriters with real paper. Emaildavid.kravets@arstechnica.com//Twitter@dmkravets